In six days I have to get on a plane. I haven't been on a plane
since 2003 when I flew home from Ireland. [A terrible trip home, which
I will one day have to recount for you all. I should have never
left Ireland early.]
This shouldn't be a big deal anymore. I
have traversed the Atlantic several times, and flown domestically all
over the country. I've been flying since I was two. Nothing has ever
happened. But it is a big deal. And, logically, I cannot explain why. It just is. And that should be enough.
I
don't know where/when things went wrong. I wasn't afraid of flying as
a child. And then suddenly I was, and I don't know how it happened.
Maybe I just reached a certain age in my early teens and suddenly it
clicked that being shot through the sky in a tube wasn't the best idea
I'd ever heard of. The source of this fear is irrelevant. The fact is
that it's there and it's unshakable, and I have had a stomachache
since my plane ticket home was purchased in November.
I hadn't
meant to fly home. I have been using cars and trains to ferry myself
back and forth between New York City and North Carolina. In July I
took a train from Penn Station to Fayetteville where my best friends
picked me up and took me to Wilmington. Although train travel is
incredibly unreliable, it was an amazing trip. The train takes you in
such a different way than a car does. I loved watching the landscape
roll by and trying to guess which state I was in. It was long, and I
was exhausted when I arrived in North Carolina, but it was worth it at
the time. Anything so long as I don't have to go shooting through the
sky.
When I went to make my Amtrak reservations for my Christmas
trip home, I found that everything was sold out. Unless I wanted to
travel on Christmas Eve, and with Amtrak's unreliability, I didn't want
to risk spending Christmas in Penn Station. So I looked up Jet Blue,
which was quite inexpensive, and without thinking booked a flight
home. I didn't let it register; I just did it. I would worry about
the consequences later.
...Well. Later is now. And I have to get on a plane next Saturday, and I don't know how I'm going to do it.
And
it doesn't matter what anyone says. You can yell flight safety
statistics at me until you're blue in the face. I know I'm more likely
to die in the taxi on the way to the airport than on the plane itself.
I know. That's not going to help. It's an irrational fear;
statistics aren't going to help, and it will just piss me off. I
wouldn't stand there and tell someone afraid of snakes how silly their
fear is, and how unlikely they are to be bitten by a cobra. Everyone
does this to me, as though when I hear it for the zillionth time things
are suddenly going to click, "What? You mean planes don't just fall
from the sky all the time? Oh my goodness. What a fool I've been!
You changed my life!"
The fact is, no amount of reassurance
can help. I know how silly it is. The flight to Raleigh is a little
over an hour long. Jet Blue makes this flight several times a day.
They're pros at it. Logically, I know this. I know I will probably
survive. But as soon as I step into the airport, my logical side hops
a plane for Rome, and I am left standing in line at the ticket counter
crying.
Yes. I am that girl. I am the girl in line to get on
the plane who is crying hysterically and begging for whoever I am with
to just rent a car with me. God, I hate that girl. Even going to the
airport to pick someone up makes me queasy. As though someone's going
to pick me up and toss me on a plane. It's crippling.
But I have
to do it. Because I don't want to spend the holidays alone in my tiny
apartment with my Charlie Brown tree. [Although I would rather spend
the holidays alone than dead... so... hmmmm.] And John and I are
discussing going to Europe next year, and I will get on a plane then
too. Because as terrified as I am of flying, I still have a deep
desire to see the world. [And this fear has never held me back in that
respect; I have to give myself credit for that.]
I will do it.
But I won't like it. And I don't want anyone to say, when/if I land,
"That wasn't so bad, was it?" Yes. Yes it is. It is that bad.
...This better be the jolliest damn Christmas we've ever had.
